Alone in the Crowns
by Sarastro the Queen o the Night
Summary: What started as a way to see himself fed ended up with Jack naming himself the protector of those of the courts of Austria and France. But, as anyone can tell you, children aren't prepared for the horrors of death and revolution.


**A/N: **So here's an idea I've been nursing for quite a while, but finally being written down. for those of you reading my other rotg fic, don't worry, I'm still working on that, this just is a side project that demanded notice.

Some of this is loyal to history and some of this is speculation because I never met these people.

* * *

There was no stealing food from Burgess, that was Jack's rule of thumb. They didn't have much anyway, so he would not take what little they had. At first that meant that he would scavenge in the forest, searching for berries and eating roots. But as always, the wind knew better than he, and once as he chewed on a root that looked fine, he was snatched up and tossed into the air. With a surprised cry he was flung high, high, higher above the clouds, unable to ask the wind to take him back to what was familiar. No, instead he was carried away from the girl with the sad eyes, away from the house that had an empty bed but a chest full of boy's clothes, away from all of those children that he had come to love.

He gave up struggling somewhere over the Atlantic, admitting defeat and asking aloud where he was being taken. But as always, the wind didn't answer. It liked its secrets. Eventually, he saw land, and squinted at it. It was just as snowy as Burgess, but it certainly looked less wild and wooded. There were great plots of land untouched by the wilds of the other land, snow covered in some places and not in others. Finally the wind set him down in front of a beautiful, beautiful palace. Staring up at it, it was impossible to believe such a thing could exist! And Jack wanted to explore it right away, but he didn't know what it was.

_Royal Alcázar of Madrid_

The Wind spoke to him rarely, but it helped him when it did, and now that he knew the name, he knew he was in Spain too! He could easily find an open door and slipped into the palace, looking around at all the people in their dresses and suits, the children, who looked like small versions of their parents, and he couldn't help but laugh.

But when he found the dining room, his jaw dropped. Such elaborate foods! Too much for the man sitting at the table, surely! Sliding past various nobles, he reached the large table, picking at the fish and fowl. As he stood, stealing bits and pieces, he jumped when he heard a great thud of a staff hitting the ground.

"_Service pour Signor le Roi Philip Cinq,_" announced a man with a loud voice, and immediately, _more food_ was brought. Jack could hardly believe his eyes!

"Thank you for bringing me," Jack murmured aloud, directing it towards the wind.

And so, for that first day, Jack ate his fill and then a little more, his stomach so full he felt as if he could burst. Moaning, Jack lay curled up on a luxurious bed, holding his stomach and waiting for it to settle. Still, he was content, because this Philip had marvelous food, and the bed was soft and the room was warm.

But, once his stomach was settled again and the sun started to go down, a boy entered the room, no more than six years old by the look of him, but accompanied by a grand entourage. They were all speaking very fast and in languages that Jack did not speak, French and Spanish by the sound of it. So Jack climbed off of the bed as the boy was prepared for bed and tucked in. Jack caught his name though, Louis, and began to amuse himself as to who the boy was. Perhaps he was the next in line for the throne!

But when he climbed out of the window, the wind gently picked him up. But it did not carry him west, but instead north. "Where are we going?" It bore him gently to a _different palace_, this one with extensive gardens, asleep in the winter. He was set down by a chimney, and he took that as his cue to jump down it, the width of the passage letting him slide in easily. This palace was untouched, but the beds were still unbelievably soft and comfortable, so Jack curled himself on it, sleeping with a small smile on his face.

* * *

Louis _le bien aimé_ had a court much better than that of Spain, Portugal, Denmark, or even England or Russia, Jack thought. The fifteenth Louis France had as king, Jack had been with this one since he had come to power at five years old after his great-grandfather Louis Quatorze, _le Roi Soleil_. Now he was reigning for what seemed just as long as the last Louis, with his grandchildren grown and the eldest, Louis Auguste, being matched with the youngest daughter of the Austrian Empress.

Jack had been there for the Princess' childhood, or at least parts of it. He had been following a young prodigy of music around, visiting some of his favorite courts with him, and saw the boy propose to the young archduchess.

"Thank you very much," the boy had said when she helped him up after he had fallen. "If you would like, I will marry you when we are grown."

Now of course the boy was in his hometown and very unhappy there even, but he wasn't at the forefront of Jack's mind, because he was riding with the King of France without the man realizing towards where they would meet with the future Dauphine.

"That portrait of her was pretty," Jack was saying, putting his bare feet up next to Louis. "I think it really did her justice. She's not going to like your court though. That whole dressing ceremony…I always thought it was ridiculous. I was there for one of your great-grandfather's and _wow _I don't think all that was necessary. But you do it every day, and so does Louis Auguste. Good sport that one." But of course, the king couldn't hear him, but Jack tried his best not to be bothered by it. He got a second hand life of luxury this way anyway.

The children of Burgess, they didn't know what they were missing, being unable to hear his stories. Not that the grandson of the girl with sad eyes would really _enjoy_ hearing about Louis Quinze's…adventures with his mistress Du Barry, but the story of how he had tossed paintings out of the Royal Alcázar when it had been burning and managed to save quite a few priceless pieces, that one would have children hanging on his every word. Or how he had followed an ambassador to Copenhagen and knocked the man's hat off of his head, and right in front of Queen Louise, too! He had plenty of stories and he wanted to tell every child of Burgess each one. He loved those children more than most other children, but that was probably because they lived beside his lake, his home.

Finally the carriage came to a stop, and when the door was opened, Jack hopped out before the king, sweeping a bow as deep as the courtiers who had come to see the Princess Antoine arrive. Now that he had arrived, Jack took to running about, tormenting The Aunts that had grown so stuffy over the years, nowhere near as happy as they had been as little girls, Princess Victoire, Princess Sophie and Princess Adélaïde. When the girl with the sad eyes had gotten married and had children, her eyes weren't so sad anymore. Sometimes Jack thought that perhaps The Aunts would have been a bit happier in life had they found husbands. At least they wouldn't be so overwhelmingly bitter towards everyone, especially Du Barry.

"I like Du Barry, her first request of Louis was for an act of mercy," said Jack aloud, informing The Aunts, who were worrying over their dogs. He rolled his eyes at them and joined where Louis Auguste and his brothers Louis Stanislas and Charles Philippe were. It was amusing to listen to them talk to each other about if the new Dauphine would be pretty or if the painting was a lie, if she was going to be nice or mean, so on and so forth. But then there was a golden carriage arriving around the bend, and Jack hopped forward to meet it.

If the servant who opened the carriage saw the door pop open before he touched it, he said nothing, and so Jack Frost was the one with the honor to open the carriage for Princess Marie Antoine when she first arrived to meet her new family.

He stood by Louis _le bien aimé,_ watching as the Dauphin and Dauphine embraced for the first time, very awkwardly too. He rode with them on the way to the beloved Versailles, watching for Marie Antoine's first reactions of the palace. She seemed entranced, but was well trained enough not to gape openly, like he had done the first time he dropped by, back when Louis Quinze was just a little child, his great-grandfather still king. The Sun King had certainly painted an impressive figure, even in his seventies as he was.

The Princess' reception with the court was rather chilly, but given the relations between the Austrian and French courts, not altogether surprising. Still, Jack excused himself to go play through the Dauphine's apartments.

* * *

The Dauphine of France was such a sweetheart, Jack found, becoming fonder of her each time he dropped by to visit. Now taken the name Marie Antoinette, she was doing her best to be both French and Austrian, but Jack had seen the differences of the courts and knew what a tricky balancing act she was performing each day.

"I warned you," said Jack, sitting on Louis XV's lunch table after the alliance with Austria had been questioned, what with Louis Auguste and Marie Antoinette yet to perform The Great Act as they tended to call it. "I warned you when she arrived that she wouldn't like this court. I told you, the Austrian court is too different from the French! But she is resourceful, I'm certain she'll manage…somehow. Once your grandson starts doing _his_ part, not just making keys and riding after the stag every day. It's not all her fault you know! It isn't just her fault that Louis doesn't know how to do what you want done! His failing, not hers! If you could tell your daughters that I'd be happy."

But, as always, he went unheard, and he sighed, instead running through the grand halls of Versailles, listening to his bare feet slap against the marble in counterpoint to the clicks and clunks of the shoes the men and women wore.

He liked Versailles a _lot._ But he also hated that there were always so many people. It was tricky, sometimes, to not be walked through. But thanks to the last King, there were plenty of elaborate candelabrum to climb and lots of ornamentation to hold onto. If those below ever noticed the chandeliers moving slightly as he leaped from one to the next through the always crowded Hall of Mirrors, they never said anything.

He would drop by where the Dauphine and her friends Marie Louise the Princess de Lamballe and Yolande de Polastron the Duchess de Polignac would be searching for new dresses, shoes, and fans. Inevitably, there would be pastries and fruits, glasses of fine champagne and small dogs that would try and play with the air he blew on them. After spending the afternoon with them, he would "dress for dinner" by stealing a coat from one of the young marquises or dukes or even one of the princes'. Louis Stanislas had some of the best coats in Jack's opinion, and it was hard to get Louis Auguste's. Then he'd go pick food off of courtiers' plates until he was full. He'd fly with the wind to the Hofburg, spend the night there before leaving Vienna for Palace Schönbrunn to spend some time with the Austrian court.

But before he did that, he'd go spend the afternoon with the Dauphine.

Jack Frost's life was a lot of things, sometimes sad, sometimes fun, mostly lonely, but it was also sometimes luxurious, and as he lounged across a couch, a glass of champagne with raspberries floating in it in his hand (it was curious, whatever he held tended to turn invisible too and that was good, otherwise there would have been a lot more screaming over the years of floating food and drink and even paintings that one time at the Alcázar), Jack thought that right now his life was really _very much _a life of luxury.

"Oh it's beautiful!" Marie Louise exclaimed, setting down her glass to marvel over a brocade that they were being shown. Jack took advantage of their distraction and reached for a cake, covered in cream, with strawberries and candied rose petals. Biting into it, it started to crumble, and he ended up having to hold it in both hands. It tasted of lemon and vanilla, creamy and delicious. Jack _loved_ Versailles, they always had so much food for him to eat. Ever since the Wind first took him to Spain, it had assured that he never went hungry. And what wonderful food he had, too!

"I would like those shoes_,_" Yolande was saying. "But in red. Is that possible?_"_

"Yes Madame_,_" answered one of the attendants.

Jack had finished his cake by then, and was licking clean his fingers, plucking a raspberry from his champagne to eat it. Sometimes he felt guilty, living like this when his beloved children of Burgess made do with not so much. But, he reasoned with himself, if he didn't eat he might die. And he couldn't really grow his own crops. So, he had to steal food to live. And where else had so much food as the courts of Europe? No one minded a few missing cakes and bits of food.

Standing, he sipped at the champagne he held, making his way to where the three noble women were admiring fabrics and shoes. "Evening or daytime?" Marie Antoinette asked, holding a fan.

"Daytime," answered Jack. Ever since his first visit, he had gotten very good at French, but he preferred English, for it was his mother tongue. Why it was he didn't know, but it was all the same. The other two women agreed with Jack, and he smiled to himself about that, pleased by that.

And that was how the afternoon passed, the three women eventually lounging together the same way Jack was, passing a glass of champagne between them. They were discussing going to a party in Paris, and Jack thought a moment about joining them, but decided against it. He missed the Austrian court, the Empress Marie Therese and her son Joseph, he missed the sulking Italian he enjoyed playing tricks on, he missed the language that sounded like it had _actual consonants._

So he left the women to go borrow a frock coat, perusing the collection of clothes that belonged to Louis Auguste. He was feeling extravagant that day. Finally settling on a purple coat with golden embroidery in the shape of vines and leaves, Jack pulled it on, walking alongside the king to his table. Dinner was always an affair full of gossip and with everyone talking to each other it was easy to snatch up some food.

* * *

"Is it so difficult to protect your honor," Jack informed Madame Du Barry, dipping a finger into her glass of wine to test the taste. "Especially when The Aunts are turning Marie Antoinette against you. Thank goodness for Empress Marie Therese, you know she told her to not outright snub you. I mean, she _is_ but not as badly as she could be." Deciding he liked the selection, Jack grabbed a spare glass and poured himself a glass when the servants left the wine unattended for a moment. Returning to the table, he grabbed an oyster from the woman's plate. "You should send her diamonds," he mused, before eating the flesh of the oyster.

And so dinner went, Jack learning all sorts of gossip about varying nobles, and when he heard people saying cruel things about Marie Antoinette or Madame du Barry, he would cool down their food, but not enough to rightly complain but enough for them to feel it to be a little off.

All too soon, dinner came to an end, and as the nobles stood to take their leave, Jack bowed to the king and Dauphin, blew kisses to Du Barry and the Dauphine and removed his coat, returning it to the collection of clothes that Louis Auguste owned. Logically, he knew that he could take it and it wouldn't be missed for a very long time, but with his lifestyle, such an elegant coat would be destroyed in not a very long time.

Climbing onto a windowsill, Jack shouted out, "Wind! To Hofburg!" And he was picked up, flung high in the air with a cry of delight.

* * *

Jack slept in a spare bedroom in Hofburg that night, his staff leaning against the bedpost. His dreams were sweet, and in the morning, he eagerly left the winter palace for the beautiful palace out in Heitzing.

Schönbrunn was beautiful as always, and far less busy and outright extravagant as Versailles, not as many people wandering around. But the people who were there Jack loved. The Austrian courts didn't require every noble to live in Schönbrunn and Hofburg, and with the Prince Archbishops, it only made sense to have them not living in Vienna. Which made his running through the halls a lot easier, not having to worry about someone passing through him in the same way as in Versailles.

As Jack was running along, he spotted a familiar face, and a grin spread on his. It was his sulking Italian! Dressed in black as always, the young man was still new enough to the German language that he didn't speak much, and when he did it was _always_ formal. Therefore, he was perfect for Jack's games and pranks.

"Afternoon!" he said, falling into step with the Italian man. "And how have you been? Any new operas up your sleeve?" knocking his staff on the ground, a small patch of ice appeared, making the man stumble, but not quite fall. Still as he recovered his balance, he muttered as he looked around to see if anyone saw his stumble and did notice a young noblewoman there,

"_Merda_."

"Watch your tongue, Maestro. You're in the summer residence of the Hapsburg dynasty!" It was childish, tormenting the Maestro Antonio Salieri, but Jack _was_ a child, and even when he saw the composer come to Vienna when he was sixteen he was too serious. Besides, the man was very good at hiding if he was aggravated so Jack wasn't worried about humiliating him in front of court.

"Meeting with Joseph?" asked the spirit, walking along at the man's side through the halls. "No, no you're dressed too plainly for that…I mean, you dress like a common person half the time and don't get me wrong I respect that, but you always put on your good suit for meeting with Joseph." A gasp of realization. "Graf Franz Xaver!" and he laughed aloud, running ahead.

He knew the Maestro and the Graf were friends, or at least friendly, but the two were his most common targets for pranks and that they often met made for easy amusement on Jack's part. Sometimes he just listened to their discussions, but inevitably he would get bored, and there was only so long Jack could sit still anyway.

The two were discussing commissions and such for Maestro Salieri, and Jack lost interest quickly. They didn't even have any tea or chocolate for him to freeze or anything! So instead he left them to go play in the gardens and find someone else to follow and play tricks on.

* * *

After following around a few nobles, he finally decided on going to visit the Graf Franz Xaver's littlest sister Maria Carolina at her residence in Wieden just outside the city walls and delighting in her little smiles when he cooled her chocolate for her. The woman was in her forties but just as cheerful as he remembered her when she was just sixteen, her eldest brother diplomat to Madrid.

She always seemed to know that Jack was there. Or at least, he liked to imagine that she did. If her chocolate was too hot, she tended to set it aside, turning to her embroidery for all of eight stitches while Jack wrapped his hands around the cup, cooling the liquid inside. Then she would pick up her cup and take a sip, content at the warm but no longer scalding drink. In the winter, he always made certain he left her a frost flower, even if they did melt in the sun before she could see them most times.

Her brothers, Franz Xaver and Wolfgang Philip, they always looked at her strangely for when she would do her drink ritual, but they took it to be just part of who she was. Probably because Jack wasn't always there to cool her drink for her.

Now he was sitting "with" the Gräfin as she took chocolate with her sister, Maria Aloisia. With her chocolate cooled by Jack's volunteering hands, Maria Carolina was happily discussing how she had been to the Maestro Salieri's most recent opera, his fourth performed opera, _La moda, ossia scompigli domestici._ Maria Aloisia was waiting for her own chocolate to cool and kept saying that she didn't find it to be the Maestro's best work.

"No, it was beautiful!" Maria Carolina was saying, insisting for the sixth or so time that the opera with the ridiculously long name was good. "The main soprano, she sang like an angel!"

"I'd trust her," Jack told Maria Aloisia, leaning over to speak conspiratorially. "Carolina always knows what she's talking about. Especially when it comes to the arts."

"I thought that the singers were good, yes, but the opera…"

"The composer is only twenty one. Allow him some leniency."

"Thank you!" said Jack. "I may play tricks on him, but I like him!"

"My dear, I know you didn't pay attention when we were learning Italian as children, but surely you know what the title means," said Maria Aloisia, testing her chocolate cautiously and finding hers was cool enough.

"Fashion, that domestic upheaval, yes Aloisia, I know," sighed Maria Carolina, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, I would think you hate everything but tragic operas!" She had poured herself another cup of chocolate, and setting it down, Jack wrapped his hands around it, watching the sisters continue to talk about the opera. "You've met the man too, Aloisia. He's a very serious man, the fact that his music is so happy is a _good thing._" And she picked up the drink, smiling at it's hot but not scalding temperature.

"Why do you do that?" demanded Maria Aloisia, gesturing to her cup.

Maria Carolina merely smiled and said, "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when it does it's good."

"You are very welcome, _Gräfin_," Jack said, grinning like an idiot. He may love Versailles, but sometimes just being with Maria Carolina at her residence in Wieden just outside the city walls was far better than even playing with children. But their conversation drifted towards the fashions of the day and just _what_ their sister Carolina Josepha had been wearing at the party hosted by the Prince and Princess of Clary and Aldringen! And as always, they found that Maria Wilhelmine von Thun und Hohenstein's fashion sense was just as lovely as her personality and appearance.

The movement of topics from things Jack was interested in to things he was not was what prompted him to climb out the window left open and fly away with a laugh. He couldn't imagine how anyone had patience to talk about such things but those of court.

* * *

Back at Schönbrunn, he was delighted to find that the co-ruler of Austria (and there was no way anyone could explain it that Jack had heard that explained the situation with Joseph and Maria Therese and who was ruling what), was out riding. He _adored _when people went riding, especially those he had attached himself to over time. Louis Auguste in France was almost always in hot pursuit of the stag, but King-Crown Prince-Emperor-whatever-he-was Joseph was more at ease with simple rides with no hunt. But that didn't mean that Jack couldn't imagine a race.

Flinging himself from tree to tree, Jack called taunts of slowness back to the riders, pulse racing and loving the sound of the horses' have breathing, the muted noise of his bare feet pushing against bark as he jumped, the rough touch to his hand where he swung himself ahead on branches and limbs.

He had been racing Joseph like this for the past seventeen years or so, he had been doing the same for Louis Auguste since he went for his first ride, and Louis Quinze too. He did this for Marie Antoinette too, but she wasn't as frequently on the horse.

He had once tried to race North around the world, he saw the man's sleigh and like any child he knew who that was, but fast as he had gone, fast as the wind launched him into the air, the sleigh had gone through a portal and left Jack hanging there above a small village in Prussia. It had been difficult not to feel disappointed and sad, but he hid it well. Not that he had anyone to hide it from but himself.

And so now, forty some years later, Jack had promised to only race with people who rode like Joseph was, like Louis Auguste did, those types of people. People who wouldn't disappear when he wanted their company, people who didn't live somewhere he couldn't find no matter how he had looked. The North Pole was big, it was impossibly big and impossible to find anything up there, it all looked the same anyway.

No matter how his mind wandered, though, Jack still won his race against Joseph when they stopped back at Schönbrunn. Whooping as he landed on the steps to the Palace, he rejoiced in his victory just long enough not to notice when a young couple, and probably newlyweds too, approached and walked right through him.

That familiar feeling of emptiness and being made of nothing and a horrible feeling that he would only ever be nothing and could never be anything and would never be seen, that feeling was what wrapped around him and seemed to whisper "now I've got you."

This was the first time in about a year that it had happened, last time it had been by a little girl in Denmark who he had been playing with in the snow with her friends. And that long pause between happenings, Jack had almost _almost_ forgotten what it was like. But now here it was in undeniable reality.

Thankfully, there were plenty of empty rooms in Schönbrunn for Jack to sit in, knees to chest, trying not to cry but inevitably letting the tears flow. There was a part of him that somehow knew that the pain would never ease, he'd just have to work on not shutting down every time.

* * *

**A/N: **everyone Jack's met and followed are real people, some more obvious than others. As for why they were speaking French in Spain, King Philip V of Spain was French, he had a claim to the French throne when Louis XIV died. The Royal Alcazar burned down on Christmas Eve of 1732 and with it a lot of priceless paintings, but a few were tossed out of windows and saved.

As for the story of the young prodigy proposing to Marie Antoine, that was Mozart! He proposed to her when she picked up after he slipped on the polished floor.

Du Barry was Louis XV's last mistress, she didn't ask any favor of him until two of her friends were set for execution, she begged him to spare them, and she earned his good favor forever because of that, Louis famous for saying, "Madame, I am delighted that the first favour you should ask of me should be an act of mercy!" She was snubbed by Marie Antoinette up until a ball in 1772 when she called to Du Barry, "there are a lot of people at Versailles today."

Jack's suggestion of sending her diamonds is a reference to the famous statement Mare Antoinette made when Du Barry tried to send her diamonds to improve her opinion of her, "I have enough diamonds"

Graf Franz Xaver Wolfgang von Orsini und Rosenberg was very loyal to the Hapsburg family, he was a diplomat to Milan, London, Copenhagen, and Madrid. Six years before he died, he was elevated to a rank that allowed him to marry within reigning royalty. As he had no children it passed to his cousin, Vinzez. Franz Xaver had four siblings that survived to adulthood, Maria Aloisia, Carolina Josepha, Maria Carolina, and Wolfgang Philip.

Hot chocolate was the drink of the upper class in the 18th century, tea was for common people on the continent, but in England the nobles drank tea as well.

Hietzing and Wieden are districts of Vienna now, but at the time, Wieden was outside the city and Hietzing was out in the country. Hofburg was the winter residence of the royal family, while Schonbrunn was the summer residence.

Just look up Maria Therese and Emperor Joseph and try and figure who ruled what when. It's impossible.


End file.
